


Of Guilty Consciences and Punctured Lungs

by SabbyStarlight



Series: Cairo Week 2020! [8]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: And everything is fine in the end, Breathing related injury, But if that could be upsetting please skip this one, Cairo Week 2020, Gen, Hurt Mac, Hurt/Comfort, Not an illness, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SabbyStarlight/pseuds/SabbyStarlight
Summary: Day Seven:  AUJack's wolf ring slices through the skin on Mac's cheek.
Series: Cairo Week 2020! [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701235
Comments: 20
Kudos: 117





	Of Guilty Consciences and Punctured Lungs

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really write AU's (though there is one in the works that's a tag to Friday's episode but it's not going to be ready to post before this week is over) so I'm bending the rules here and saying this is set in an AU where Jack never left and calling that good enough. 
> 
> I originally started this all the way back for George Eads Appreciation Week but it took on a mind of its own and I didn't have time to finish it for that. And then the world got rocked by this virus straight out of a horror movie and everything was a little too raw to come back and work on it. Breathing issue-related whumping lost all its appeal. But after a while, I decided that focusing on the bad was just letting the negativity win, so I pushed through and finished this. Please know that a large portion of this fic centers around a pulmonary injury and Mac struggling to breathe. It is not related to any illness at all, real or fake, and it ends with him alive and well, assuring a worried Jack that he's fine, but if there's a chance of this being triggering for you, please pass this fic over and maybe come back to it later when real life is a little less terrifying. Take care of yourselves and remember that there's always comfort to come after the hurt, we've pretty much built an entire fandom from that.

Jack's wolf ring slices through the skin on Mac's cheek.

He fights back a wince, trying to keep his face impassive, stoic against the pain. It wasn't a hard hit, Jack had put hardly any weight behind the throw, but it was enough to leave a mark and while that was the plan, Mac knew that it was hurting Jack way more than the stinging cut and quickly-forming bruise were hurting him.

"You ready to tell me who you work for now?" Jack's voice echoed through the room, bouncing off the ceilings and the high row of windows to their left. Mac made the mistake of looking up at him, from his position kneeling on the cold floor, and while Jack was doing a good job of keeping their cover, anyone who didn't know him would see nothing more than an angry man whose arms running operation had been infiltrated by an unknown spy, Mac could see the hurt in the familiar dark eyes staring back at him. Could see the apology leaking through, begging Mac to forgive him, behind the anger there. Not anger at Mac, though that was, thankfully, what it was reading as. No, Jack was furious with himself for laying a hand on the kid he was sworn to protect.

"Already told you," Mac shrugged as best he could with Jack's hand still tightly wound in the collar of his shirt, keeping him still. "Don't work for anyone. Saw the vehicle tracks. This place is supposed to be empty, has been for years. Got curious."

"Got curious about what you could steal from me, maybe," Jack sneered, roughly cuffing his free hand against the side of Mac's head. "Is that why my men found you snooping around the out buildings?"

In actuality, Mac had been adding to the crates of ammo waiting for distribution, not taking things from them. Tracking devices, planted into the linings of the boxes, transmitting back to Riley who was, thankfully, safe and sound at Phoenix, waiting on the information on where the weapons were ending up. The guards, if you could call the two young men who looked as if they were barely out of their teens but were surprisingly strong, had only assumed he was a thief. Mac hadn't said anything to change their assumptions between the blows to his face and kicks to his ribs that he couldn't deflect without giving away his status as a highly trained operative, much more skilled in hand-to-hand combat than they were. Didn't mean it stopped their hits from hurting though.

That pain had nothing on seeing the look on Jack's face when the guards, who had never questioned Jack's authenticity when he stepped into the role of their never seen before, man behind the curtain, boss, dragged him into the dusty building they had been working out of, beaming with pride, claiming to have captured a spy.

"Guns?" Mac shook his head, scanning the room unimpressed. "Don't like 'em. Not worth the hassle, too easy to track. Nothing I want here. Look, I'm sorry, alright? I went looking around where I shouldn't have. Let me go and nobody'll know you're here. I won't say a word." He fought to keep the hitch out of his voice from talking so much, words pulling on bruised ribs. "Promise."

"Don't trust him, boss," One of the guards called from behind Mac's shoulder and Jack held up a silencing hand.

"You want to talk promises?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow. "What if I make a promise to you? Not to kill you right here and now if you drop the innocent act and tell me who sent you."

"I can't tell you because there isn't anyone."

"Then we'll just have to see if my promise can outlive my generous mood," Jack scoffed in disgust, letting go of his hold on Mac's shirt suddenly, sending him falling to the floor with a kick to his side that left Mac panting against the dusty cement, ribs that had only been bruised earlier were now almost certainly broken, not that Jack would know he did any actual damage. It just looked like Mac was playing his role in their little improv session. "Get him out of here," He called and the same two guards stepped forward. "First cell on the left," Jack instructed, eyes flicking between Mac's and the row of windows along the wall, apology and instructions hidden in the act. "I'll see if he's feeling a little more talkative later."

Calling the room Mac was thrown into a cell was a little generous, in his opinion. It was more along the lines of a dog kennel, complete with three 'walls' made out of chain-link fencing fastened from floor to ceiling. He could break it down easily, but it would be loud, alerting his captors of his escape and putting Jack in the terrible position of having to keep their cover again. The fourth wall, though, was solid, with a window up top just like Jack had assured him there would be. Mac forced himself to sit up, bracing one arm against his side trying to alleviate some of the pulsing ache in his side as he caught his breath and waited for the sounds of Jack and his team of goons going back to packing crates with illegal ammunition, just out of sight.

"Get yourself together, Mac," He muttered under his breath, wiping away the streak of blood that was drying on his cheek and trying to block out the image of Jack's ring causing it.

It would have been a fairly easy task uninjured, finding enough footholds in the roughly hewed brick wall to climb high enough to reach the window, but with his ribs protesting every pulling muscle as he climbed he was thankful for the sturdy windowsill secured into the wall when his trembling hands reached it. Taking a moment to lean his forehead against the cool brickwork and trying to level his breath into something less grating than the harsh pants it had become. Jack's voice rang out in the back of his head, his Jack's, not the angry, brash, undercover character Jack had forced himself into in the briefest of seconds he'd had to prepare himself when he saw that Mac had been made. _Come on, bud._ Jack's voice coached. _You got this. Almost there. That window screen pops right out. Little bit further and you're in the clear. You can rest when you make it to exfil, alright? Hop on that plane and I'll be on the next one flyin out, right behind ya. Probably land before you even break free from our friends in Medical. Think it's my turn to buy the beers ain't it? Hell, I'm buyin' even if it's not, I owe you one after that scene back there. I can't make it up to you 'less you get outta here though._

True to his word, the window screen fell from its track with barely any effort on Mac's part. It was only a quick jump down into the overgrown grass lining the building to freedom. "It's not that high," Mac told himself as he pulled himself up further. "Not even a second-story fall." He talked himself through the motions, voice barely a whisper so to make sure Jack and the guards couldn't hear him. "Just climb up and jump." He pulled himself up to the window and had to choke back a scream of pain, black spots clouding his vision, as he felt one of his ribs give as he pulled himself through the window, torso scraping along the ledge.

Mac was pretty sure he fully blacked out when he hit the ground because he had no memory of the agonizing pain he knew falling had to have caused. When he was finally aware enough to remember that he was supposed to be moving, ideally running, towards his exfil site, every breath he managed to take was laborious and increased the stabbing ache in his chest. He was moving on pure stubbornness, fueled by Jack's voice in his mind, as he snuck off the compound.

It was a miserable jog back to the airstrip he had touched down in a few days earlier, but he managed, waving to the familiar exfil pilot before hunching forward and bracing his palms against his knees, attempting to slow the harsh panting his breaths had turned into.

Collapsing into the familiar leather seat once he boarded the jet, which was oddly quiet since he and Jack had been instructed to fly in and out separately to avoid suspicion, should have been a relief but Mac couldn't shake the heavy weight that had settled on his chest. He waited until the plane was in the air, still unable to take a deep breath but chalking it up to broken ribs, before bracing an arm around his aching side and pushing himself back up, slowly making his way down the aisle to the tiny bathroom at the back of the cabin. Jack had been holding back, anyone who had ever seen him fight could tell, barely putting any weight behind each hit. Mac had been on the receiving end of way worse beatings than that one over the course of his time working undercover ops. There was no reason for him to feel as bad as he did.

Looking at his reflection in the mirror, Mac began to understand the concerned looks he had been receiving from the people milling about the public airstrip when he arrived. Bruises had blossomed across his face, practically glowing against his pale skin in the harsh light and blood had dried from the cut on his cheekbone, painting a splash of rust that trailed all the way down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. He didn't bother checking out the bruises he knew spanned his entire left side, there was nothing he could do about them, so he splashed a couple handfulls of cold water on his face, trying to get rid of the strange flush on his cheeks, before soaking a hand towel under the tap and leaving the bathroom still scrubbing the worst of the dirt and grime from his face.

He stared longingly at the sofa he usually crashed on during after mission flights but knew better than to risk laying down on it. That act alone would have been hell on his ribs but getting back up would be worse and he was alone this time, didn't even have Jack's steady hands to help him. Throwing the blood-stained towel into a wastebasket, Mac grabbed a water bottle and an ice pack from the mini-fridge and slowly lowered himself into the seat Jack usually occupied, pretending it wasn't a choice he made consciously, and tucked the ice pack under his shirt, hissing at the cold.

He fell asleep despite his discomfort, exhausted from the pain and the mission that had caused it, hoping that he would feel better by the time the plane landed.

He didn't.

If anything he felt worse. The short walk to the car Matty had sent to pick him up left his vision whiting in and out as he collapsed into the backseat, thankful for the rule Jack had made a long time ago stating that if he wasn't around to drive Mac back to HQ after a mission the transport car was to come with a driver so Mac wouldn't have to drive himself. It had seemed unnecessary and insanely overprotective at the time, Mac was more than capable of driving himself around, but he was concerned that he would have been an actual danger to himself and anyone else on the roads if he had gotten behind the wheel feeling as unsteady as he did in that moment.

"Do you need a hand?" The driver, who's name Mac hadn't bothered to get, an uncharacteristic move on his part that signaled just how much he was hurting, asked, concerned eyes peering back at him from the rearview mirror.

"No," Mac shook his head, ignoring the way his hands were trembling as he struggled to unclip his seatbelt. "No, I'll be alright. Um, actually though, if you could let Director Webber know that I'm heading up to Medical before I check in for debrief that would be great."

"I'll be sure to tell her," He assured, waiting until Mac crossed the parking garage and disappeared from his view to pull out his phone and make the promised call, not wanting to take his eyes off the young man he had been entrusted to deliver back to Phoenix in one piece. None of the injuries were his fault, but he couldn't help but feel as though he hadn't done a good enough job of keeping him safe.

Mac fumbled with the elevator buttons for a moment, letting his forehead drop to the cool metal panels lining the walls once he was on his way to Phoenix Med's floor. Something was seriously wrong. The grating pain in his chest was still there with each breath he took, though it got significantly worse the more he moved, radiating all the way around his chest and back, creeping up into his shoulder.

The tone signaling that the elevator had arrived at the desired floor startled him, the small space overwhelmingly quiet without Jack there beside him to goodnaturedly tease him about the flinch. It was strange having to push open the heavy door to the medical wing himself, not having a partner hovering at his side to do it for him.

He hadn't even noticed that he had stopped in place, trying to remember the last time he had been in Medical alone.

"Agent MacGyver?" Mac flinched again as an unfamiliar hand wrapped around his elbow. He spun around, blinking away the dizziness the sudden movement triggered until his eyes landed on a nurse in familiar Phoenix-issued scrubs. Her eyes quickly scanned over the injuries she could see before peering around him, frowning at the empty doorway.

It took a moment for Mac to realize she too was searching for Jack. "He isn't here. Not yet. But I... I think I might need some help."

"Alright," She nodded, tightening her grip on his arm and leading him out of the entrance, past the small waiting room and onto one of the exam tables in the med bay, pulling the curtain behind her. "I'm going to need a little more information than that though. Want to fill me in?"

"Chest. Hurts. Like something's trying to claw it's way out whenever I take a breath."

Careful fingers hiked up his shirt and probed at the bruises on his ribs and the pain it caused made Mac eternally grateful for the table he was positioned on as what little air was left in his lungs escaped him in a pained gasp and his world went black.

His memories of the next few moments were hazy at best, bits and pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite match up. The first nurse disappeared for a moment, only to return with a team of other nurses and doctors sharing worried looks that Mac didn't have the energy to decipher. An oxygen mask was strapped onto his face and he didn't even care, his mind too busy trying to remember how to breathe to begin to summon the usual flashbacks that came knocking at his subconscious after that ill-fated mission in Mexico. There were X-rays and ultrasounds, medical jargon thrown around the small space, barely distinguishable amidst the constant sound of equipment being rolled in and out on carts, wheels squeaking against the floor. There was something wrong with his lungs, if all the pulmonary talk was something to go by, though Mac could have told them that much without all the hurried tests.

The term 'pneumothorax' was thrown around enough for Mac to pick up on it and the part of his brain that was thankful to have an answer was overshadowed by the part of his brain that reminded him just how serious that diagnosis was.

He watched through half-lidded eyes as an IV line was started in his right arm, the pinch from the needle barely discernible through the haze of pain he was already in. A hand, fingers cool, encased in blue latex, tapped against his cheek, drawing his attention up to Laurel's familiar face, half-hidden behind a mask, green eyes shining with sympathy. He hadn't even noticed she had been a part of the team that had flocked into his curtained-off room. Mac vaguely processed her trying to explain what was happening, why unfamiliar hands were suddenly forming restrictive grips on his wrists and ankles. It made sense when he caught a glimpse of a needle glinting against the stark white of one of the doctor's lab coats, substantially larger than the one already in his arm, and the pieces of what was about to happen fell into place.

Mac was pretty far from being a squeamish person but there wasn't much he wouldn't have given in that moment for it to be Jack's hands on his shoulders, holding him down and offering what little comfort he could in one practiced move as he blacked out again, the stabbing pain stealing his breath before it could return it in the sickest form of a cosmic joke Mac had ever been a part of. The next time he was aware enough to lift his head up and explore the damage for himself there was a tube sticking out from the side of his chest, just above the roadmap of bruises plastered across his side. It hurt, a dull, throbbing ache that pulsed with each heartbeat, but he could feel an instant improvement in his breathing already so he let his head drop back to the papery pillow that crinkled beneath him and floated off again.

Jack still wasn't there the next time he woke up, which wasn't too upsetting, seeing as how Mac didn't actually know how long he had been out and it could have been mere minutes.

The fact that his partner still hadn’t shown up by the time Mac had been transferred out of the med bay and into one of the all-to-familiar private rooms was slightly more concerning and by that time he was feeling well enough to be bored, fingers twitching restlessly against rough sheets and eyes glancing between the clock on the wall in front of him, counting minutes as they ticked past, and the closed door any time he heard footsteps in the hallway outside.

That attention was what allowed him to notice the moment the door handle began to turn, alerting him to someone about to enter his room despite how carefully they were being, trying not to disturb the quiet in case he was asleep.

"About time! I was wondering when you were gonna..." Mac’s voice trailed off, bruised smile turning into a frown as the door opened the rest of the way to reveal Riley on the other side. "Oh."

"Wow," She teased. "Good to see you too. If you don't want me here I can," She turned back around, hand on the doorknob.

"Don't," Mac laughed, reaching out a hand and waving her further into the room. "Get back in here."

There was a smile on her face as she turned back towards him, crossing the few short steps to his bed and grasping his outstretched hand in her own. “I hear your mission went a little south and you ended up in Medical, rush up here to check on you, and you aren’t the least bit happy to see me?”

"Sorry,” He laughed. “I thought you were gonna be Jack."

"Yeah," She looked around the room. "Where'd he take off to, anyway? I expected to find him up here with you."

"He wasn't with you?" Mac frowned, ignoring the ache from his blackened eye.

"I haven't seen him since you two made it back."

"He didn't fly back with me. We had separate exfils. Had to fly out of a public airstrip, didn't want someone there seeing us board a plane together and get suspicious. Not after we went through all this to keep our covers... You really haven't seen him?" The nagging feeling that Mac had been fighting, the one that was telling him something wasn’t right, multiplied tenfold.

"No. Where the hell is he?" Riley frowned.

"He came home, right?” Mac asked. “I mean, his plane landed?"

“I,” Riley let go of his hand, pulling out her phone to make sure she didn’t have any missed calls. “We would have heard if it didn’t, right? Someone would have told us?”

“Yeah,” Mac bit his lip, trying to convince himself. “Yeah, he’s fine. He has to be. Unless...”

“What?” Riley frowned, looking him over closely for the first time since walking into his room, taking in the bruises and cuts on his face. “Mac? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing, just,” Mac sighed. “He’s probably feeling guilty. Somewhere beating himself up.”

“Over what?”

Mac forced a smile, trying to lighten the situation. “Beating me up? All this? Kinda came from him keeping our covers.”

“Jack is the one who did this to you? You have a freaking chest tube, Mac, how hard did he hit you?”

“It isn’t all from him,” Mac quickly defended his partner. “And if I hadn’t gotten caught he wouldn’t have had to do any of it.”

“Still,” Riley looked around the room again, as if she was waiting for Jack to appear. “He’s somewhere blaming himself for it, you know he is.”

“Yeah,” Mac agreed. “Can you go track him down? Send him up here to see that I’m fine?”

“You sure you’ll be alright by yourself?”

“Positive,” He assured, giving her hand a squeeze before letting go. “I’m more worried about him at the moment.”

"I'll see what I can do," Riley promised, pressing a quick kiss to Mac's forehead, one of the few places on his face not covered by bruises and cuts, before leaving him alone once more.

It felt like hours passed before a knock rang out from Mac's closed door. He knew it was Jack, he could tell by the way he knocked, but he couldn't remember Jack ever knocking on his door. _Family don't knock._ But, Mac tried to reason with himself, Jack was very rarely on the outside of his hospital room to begin with, didn't give him many occasions to knock. But when he did he never bothered with waiting around for permission, just barging in automatically. The empty pause sounded wrong this time, hollow, as Mac waited for the door to open.

"Jack?" He called, ignoring the ache in his chest from raising his voice. "Get in here, I'm fine."

The door opened, slowly, and Jack finally stepped through. "Oh, God," he whispered when he got his first glimpse of Mac's face and reached behind him for the door handle.

"Stop, I'm fine," Mac repeated. "Really, man, c'mon. Just some bruises."

Jack closed his eyes for a moment, hoping against all odds that when he opened them again his partner wouldn't be hurt, but to no avail. "That's more than bruises, Mac. Is that a... That's a tube. In your chest. I...I can't…" his voice broke. "I did that. To you. I hurt you."

"I'm fine," Mac tried again but Jack sent him a glare, quickly causing him to rethink his choice of words. "Or, at least, I will be in a day or two. No big deal. You were keeping our cover. If anyone's to blame here it should be me, I'm the one who got caught."

"Don't you blame yourself for this," Jack quickly scolded.

Mac smiled. "I'll stop when you stop."

"I…" Jack hesitated, eventually breaking down and grabbing the visitor chair from the corner and pulling it alongside Mac's bed, bracing his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands. "I'm so sorry, kid."

"For what?" Mac reached over, hiding a wince as the movement pulled on broken ribs, to tug on Jack's arm. “For keeping our covers? Trust me, as much as this hurts? Those guys would have done a lot worse if you hadn’t taken matters into your own hands. You and I both know it. And that’s if they didn’t just kill me on the spot.”

“I hurt you,” Jack finally relented his hand to Mac, wrapping his fingers around Mac’s and looking up, getting a closer look at the bruises, trying to catalog which cut came from which hit. “Mac, my job, hell, my sole purpose on this Earth, is to keep you safe. And I went off and did this to you?” His other hand reached out, carefully, and traced over the bruises on Mac’s cheek.

Mac stayed still as Jack’s fingers ghosted, feather-light, across his face, knowing that the slightest flinch from him would reset any progress that had been made. “See?” He asked softly, once Jack’s hand had settled against his neck. “No big deal.”

"There's a tube sticking out of your chest right now, bud. And you're tryin' to tell me it's no big deal?"

"It really isn't," Mac shrugged. "It wasn't exactly fun, but they said it can probably come out in the morning. More of a precaution than anything, lung wasn't reinflating as fast as they wanted from just the needle decompression."

Jack shuddered at the words, hating the mental images they supplied but figuring that it was karma's way of making him pay. If not for being the cause of the injury, then for not being there to help with the immediate aftermath. “I tried to go easy but… Couldn’t exactly get caught pullin’ punches, ya know?”

"I know," Mac assured. "Trust me, the whole time I kept thinking that it had to be hurting you way more than it was me."

“I don’t know about that,” Jack leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, not allowing himself the comfort of keeping his hands on Mac, as much as he wanted to, not after the damage they had caused. “The bruises are one thing but I kicked you hard enough to break ribs, which punctured a lung, and I didn’t even realize it, kid. You can forgive me for that if you want but I ain’t ever gonna forgive myself.”

“It wasn’t all you,” Mac protested, continuing when it was clear Jack didn’t believe him. “Pretty sure the guys who caught me cracked them before you even knew I had been made. And then I did the rest of the damage climbing out that window and jumping out. Being too stubborn to hotwire a car and deciding to jog the whole way back to the airstrip was also a bad decision on my part, looking back on it.”

“The window I told you to crawl out of," Jack berated himself for the less-than-ideal plan going south. "No matter how you look at it, I had a hand in causing all this. I’m so sorry, Mac.”

“You can’t keep apologizing for this forever, you know.”

“I can sure try. We haven’t even begun to cover the fact that I chickened out and didn’t come straight here when my plane landed.” Jack shook his head and Mac couldn’t decide which it was, disgust or disappointment, written all over his face but either way it was directed at himself.

“You’re here now. And you can make it up to me by forgiving yourself,” Mac tried. It didn’t work, not completely, but it got Jack to crack the tiniest of smiles.

“How about I just pretend to forgive myself and we call it good enough?” Jack offered.

It wasn’t enough, not even close, but it was progress and Mac had learned long ago not to think too hard about what did or did not qualify as a win in their line of work. “It’s a start.” He agreed, reaching out a hand for a fist bump. Sometimes a start was all it took.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank y'all so much for spending Cairo Week with me! It's been so much fun and I appreciate each and every one of you who take the time to read what I write more than you'll ever know.


End file.
